Entries in Adventures in art (3)
Enough...
September 7, 2007 at 15:35 ...brain-bending introspection. In the last few months, I've come to love the iPod that E gave me. I wasn't that interested in it at first, and then BAM-- I'm hooked. Music is my drug of choice. So here's something fun for your Friday.
Listen here.
And ladies, what do you think--Dwight Yoakum or Lyle Lovett? Dwight Yoakum is mighty fine, but y'know, Lyle has a Rather Large Band.
September 7, 2007
Blogging, scrapping, and the meaning of life
August 28, 2006 at 17:21 Once I became a mom, I joined the camera-toting hordes of people who believe their kids are making history every minute of every day.
When my children were infants, I shot a roll of film a week. I kept a baby calendar marking milestones and a lavishly illustrated baby book. I lined them up for professional photographs, and in addition to keeping up my own photo albums, I created photo albums for each of them.
I never did buy a video camera, though I occasionally recorded my children’s voices on cassette tapes. My own journal writing, which I’d been faithfully doing for more than 20 years, tapered off with the arrival of my son and practically ground to a halt with the birth of my daughter.
When it was time to pack for our overseas move, I had to figure out what to do with the thousands of photos, old letters, and journals that had chronicled my life. They filled a large closet from top to bottom.
And then once I settled in Belgium, I took up blogging and scrapbooking, joining millions of people worldwide writing about their days and posting snapshots in elaborate books and online albums. The deeper I get into blogging and scrapbooking, the more I'm fascinated by their popularity.
Why do we do it?
Why do we seem to be becoming increasingly obsessed with documenting our lives?
On the surface, it appears to be simply about preserving memories or expressing ourselves artistically or creatively. But I wonder if there isn’t something bigger going on. Are our blogs, scrapbooks, photo albums and discs our way of stopping time and anchoring ourselves in a rapidly changing world? Are they a way to justify our existence—to physically demonstrate that our daily lives mattered?
Some scrapbooks and blogs seem to be an attempt to recreate lives with a more colorful cast of characters—an attempt to whitewash the mundane, portray reality in a flattering light, and write a better story than the one we’re living. They’re like PR campaigns tuned to a positive key message. Other blogs and scrapbooks seem more authentic, an attempt to record what time and discretion might bury and to connect with one’s self and one’s peers. Both groups talk about extending that connection beyond their lifetimes and into the next generation, imagining they’re casually writing a history or biography that someone down the line will appreciate.
This of course presumes that the next generation will care about the minutiae of our lives. I already carry the photographic legacy of my grandparents, who had their first child in 1918, and my parents, who had theirs in 1946. The number of photos generated increases with each subsequent generation. How many will be too many to save? Who will have the space and interest to store and care for generations of memories? I wonder if the scrapbooks and photo albums that we’re laboring over may end up in landfills years from now. Or maybe there will be a special recycling bin for them.
I know from experience that we can’t carry the past, physically or mentally, too far into the future. The truth is that future generations will be more concerned with living their own lives than sharing ours. They won’t want our pasts crowding their closets, basements, or hard drives.
Or will they? What do you think?
© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.
August 29, 2006
